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Believers in the Real Presence argue that in John chapter 6, Jesus clearly intends his audience to take him literally when he commands to “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood.” In other words, this isn’t poetic imagery, this isn’t figurative speech, and this isn’t Jesus speaking in metaphors the way he sometimes does elsewhere. The claim is that Jesus really means what he says here.
But some Protestants push back and say, “Hold on—you Catholics (or any believer in the Real Presence for that matter) aren’t being consistent.” After all, in the very same Gospel of John, Jesus also says things like, “I am a door,” and “I am the vine.” And nobody—Catholics included—takes those statements literally. Nobody thinks Jesus has hinges or bark or leaves.
So the challenge is this: if we don’t take Jesus literally when he calls himself a door or a vine, why should we suddenly switch gears and take him literally when he says we must eat his flesh and drink his blood?
Is that a fair objection? Are Catholics being inconsistent here?
Stick around—and you’ll find out!
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Alright—let’s get into it.
So here’s the objection in a nutshell.
If Catholics interpret Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood literally in John 6, then consistency would require us to take him literally when he says he’s a door in John 10:9 and a vine in John 15:5.
But since Catholics clearly don’t take those other passages literally, so the argument goes, then Catholics shouldn’t take John 6 literally either.
This objection isn’t new, and it’s not coming from fringe voices. For example, the late Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie make this argument in their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. They write,
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Jesus “said, ‘I am the door’ . . . and ‘I am the vine’ . . . and Roman Catholic scholars do not take these statements literally, even though they come from the same book that records ‘This is my body’!”
In other words, if we’re reading John’s Gospel consistently, why not interpret all these statements the same way?
Todd Baker—pastor of Shalom, Shalom Messianic Congregation in Dallas, Texas, and president of Brit Hadashah Ministries—takes this line of reasoning even further in chapter 10 of his book Exodus from Rome, Volume I. Baker emphasizes that Jesus’ words in John 6 are part of a broader pattern of “I AM” statements throughout John’s Gospel.
So let’s look at that.
In John 10:9, Jesus says, “I AM the door.”
In John 15:5, Jesus says, “I AM the vine.”
And in John 6:48, right at the beginning of the Bread of Life discourse, Jesus says, “I AM the bread of life.”
According to Baker, that “I AM” formula gives us a clue as to how we’re supposed to interpret Jesus’ words later in John 6—especially when he says the bread he will give is his flesh and that we must eat it.
The reasoning goes like this: just as “I am the door” and “I am the vine” are clearly figurative, “I am the bread of life” must be figurative too. And since Jesus identifies that bread as his flesh, it follows that the command to eat his flesh and drink his blood should be understood figuratively too—the sense being that we must believe in Jesus.
So what do we say in response?
Well, the first thing to notice is that Christians who raise this objection tend to focus only on what’s similar across the passages—namely, the “I Am” formula. And they often present it as though that’s all Jesus said. This makes the parallel with the other “I AM” statements seem to entail that the “I Am the Bread of Life” statement is meant to be interpreted within the same vein as the others.
But that’s misleading. Because once you actually read John 6 carefully, you discover that there’s a whole lot going on in the Bread of Life discourse that simply doesn’t happen in the door and vine passages. And those differences matter. They give us solid reasons to interpret Jesus’ words in John 6 differently from how we interpret his other “I AM” sayings.
So let’s walk through those differences step by step.
First, let’s look at how Jesus’s audience reacts. This is huge because it drives the whole narrative.
In John 6, both the Jews and Jesus’ own disciples interpret his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood literally. We’re told in verse 52 that the Jews “disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” That question only make sense if they understood Jesus to be speaking literally. Nobody asks, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” if they think he’s speaking figuratively.
And it’s not just the Jews. In verse 61, John tells us that many of Jesus’s disciples—not enemies, not outsiders, but disciples—say, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
Now, pause there for a second.
Why would this be a hard saying if they took Jesus to mean “Believe in me”? They already believed in Jesus. The disciples, therefore, clearly understood Jesus to be saying something more than just “Have faith in me.” They took his words literally—and they were freakin out over them.
So both the Jews and the disciples interpret Jesus’ words in a literal way.
Now, the key question becomes: how does Jesus respond to their interpretations—both Jews and disciples?
When the Jews express confusion and shock, Jesus doesn’t retreat to the metaphorical language he used earlier in the discourse.
Remember, back in verse 35, Jesus says, “He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” That language clearly suggests a metaphorical sense—spiritually eating by coming to Jesus and spiritually drinking by believing in him. If Jesus intended the later language about eating his flesh and drinking his blood to be figurative as well, appealing to this prior metaphorical language would have been a perfect way to clarify things. Sure, the Jews probably still wouldn’t have believed. But at least such a clarification would have put to rest their concern about eating his flesh.
But, of course, Jesus doesn’t retreat to the metaphorical language. Instead, he doubles down.
In verses 53 through 58, Jesus repeatedly insists that his flesh must be eaten and his blood must be drunk. In fact, he reiterates this command six times in six verses.
Now think about this from a teaching standpoint.
Every good teacher knows that if your audience is stumbling over a particular image or expression, you don’t just keep repeating it over and over and hope they magically figure it out. You rephrase. You clarify. You explain. But Jesus doesn’t do that here.
If Jesus intended his words to be taken figuratively, like in the door and vine passages, it doesn’t make sense that he would continue with the language that caused the difficulty in the first place.
And it gets even more striking.
After the Jews begin arguing among themselves, the language Jesus uses for “eating” actually becomes more graphic (the opposite of what you would expect if Jesus were speaking figuratively).
Before verse 54, when Jesus gives the command, John uses the aorist form of the Greek verb esthíō, which is a related verb phago—a fairly generic term for eating. But starting in verse 54, the Greek word changes to trogo, which carries the idea of gnawing or chewing.
So let me ask you this: why would Jesus—or John—switch to more vivid, more concrete language if the meaning is supposed to be less literal?
That move makes no sense if Jesus is only speaking figuratively. But it makes perfect sense if he’s emphasizing the realism of what he’s saying.
Now let’s look at how Jesus responds to his disciples.
In verse 61, when they express difficulty, Jesus doesn’t soften the teaching and try to dispel the difficulty. He doesn’t say, “Guys, relax—I’m just speaking figuratively.”
Instead, he acknowledges the difficulty and then points to something even more astonishing. He says, starting in the second half of verse 61 through 62: “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before.” In other words, “You think this is hard to believe? Just wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The implication seems to be that the Ascension is even harder to believe than his teaching to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Perhaps this is because of the miraculous nature of him going into the air and disappearing before their eyes. Why would Jesus underscore the difficulty of his teaching if all he meant was, “Believe in me”? That wouldn’t be difficult for the disciples because they already believed in him.
And notice—once again—Jesus doesn’t redirect them back to the earlier metaphorical language about coming to him and believing. That could have easily quelled the fear of his disciples since they already were coming to him and believing.
Even more than that, Jesus allows his disciples to walk away.
Verse 66 tells us that many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. And then Jesus turns to the apostles and asks, “Do you also wish to go away?”
That stands out as remarkably different from how Jesus typically interacts with his disciples when it comes to teachings with hidden meanings. For example, in Mark 4:33-34, we’re told, “With many such parables he spoke the word to them [the multitudes] . . . he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.” In John 4:32-34, when the apostles thought Jesus was talking about literal food, he explains that his “food” is doing the will of the Father. In Matthew 16:5-12, Jesus warns, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (v. 5), and that causes the apostles to think he’s commanding them not to eat the bread from the local Pharisaic and Sadducean sandwich shop. But, of course, Jesus clarifies their misunderstanding by informing them he was talking about the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
So if the disciples in John 6 were misunderstanding Jesus—thinking he meant literal eating when he really meant believing—why wouldn’t Jesus correct them? Especially when the stakes are so high. After all, Jesus says in verse 53, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man . . . you have no life in you.”
Are we really supposed to believe that Jesus allowed his disciples to walk away over a misunderstanding about something that determines eternal life? That strains credibility.
Now, contrast all of this with the door and vine passages.
In neither case does Jesus’s audience interpret him literally.
Nobody says, “How can this man be a door?” Nobody says, “How can this man be a plant?” Jesus’ audience recognized he was speaking metaphorically. And that’s understandable because these images make sense as metaphors. Jesus is like a door because he’s the way into God’s kingdom. He’s like a vine because we receive spiritual life by being united to him. There’s no confusion. No scandal. No walkouts.
And there’s no extended back-and-forth between Jesus and his audience—because there’s no need to.
But in John 6? Everything changes.
Jesus emphasizes his flesh as real food and blood as real drink. And this shocks people. It offends them. It prompts them to further inquire because that language goes beyond metaphors. And Jesus responds—not by clarifying it away to ease the difficulty—but by affirming it.
So, are Catholics being inconsistent in their literal interpretation of Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood in John 6? Nope!
The presence of an “I AM” statement by itself doesn’t determine whether Jesus is speaking figuratively or literally. Context does. Audience reaction does. Jesus’ response does.
And when you take all of that seriously, the “I AM” saying in John 6 stands in a category on its own.
So believers in the Real Presence don’t have to abandon a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words in John 6 . At least not for the reason we’ve considered today. As for other reasons why some Christians think we should—well, we’ll save those for another time.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out our website at catholic.com, my personal website karlobroussard.com.
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